The Black Republican

When the Martin Luther King holiday was first proposed, I opposed its establishment. I'd love to say my opposition was based on completely rational reasons, but in all honesty I was somewhat more prejudiced when I was a teenager. But the gripe I used to convince myself that the holiday was illegitimate was this: why shouldn't a great man of America's history like Frederick Douglass have a day honoring him, and a holiday established instead in favor of a more recent gentleman of questionable morals? Time, I believed, would rate King less of a hero in the American pantheon than others, and we shouldn't rush to canonize him before history bore that judgement.

Each year on this holiday, I grow further and further from that opinion. Not that I don't still feel Frederick Douglass deserves his due, but as King's era grows more distant, we see more clearly his effect on American history and the national character. Paradoxically, the stain on his own character is as ripe for legend as the Sally Hemming story is for Jefferson, with less and less effect on his memory as time passes. These stains remind us that our heroes were human, and our own humanity need not bar us from heroism in our time. In the field even now, our armies are filled with Americans proving their heroism and their right to be free. As Douglass once explained:

Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pockets, and there is no power on earth which can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship in the United States.

Today, we know that this liberating experience isn't just limited to the black man, but is a sanctifying experience for any American.

But King was a man of peace, and in some ways that required him to fight an even more hazardous battle, and that required a leader of special talents. An eloquent statement of the nature of this character - and America's - in relation to the King holiday comes today from Roya Hakakian, an Iranian refugee who began to lose her distrust of The Great Satan by listening to King's speeches.

Today, in the distant corners where terror is raging, many teenagers hold views on America similar to those I once held. The enemy has an arsenal, but also a narrative. According to that narrative, the world's superpower represents only one race, and its history is a single tale of intolerance, arrogance, and domination. The war against this enemy is impossible to win without defeating that narrative. To tell American history in its entirety is to disprove the fabrications about who an American is. To tell the story of the Civil Rights Movement is to tell the story of how arrogance was made to give way to justice by none other than a man who advocated peace. Against the grim and infallible image that is painted of America, this will be a truer portrait: colorful and human.

When Washington turned away calls for him to reign as monarch, he forever decreed that American would have no king. But many years later, a prince among orators led us on a march to the promised land. We honor this day not just to remember him, and the march, but also to recall that it is for liberty for all Americans that he fought. His will be the only "King Day" we will celebrate.